


...And Burn To Ashy Remnants of Beauty...

by ftlow



Series: When Flowers Bloom... [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Multi, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, wound flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:28:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28170159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftlow/pseuds/ftlow
Summary: Sometimes, love came without soulmate marks, or in spite of them. Sometimes the flowers were a hindrance, an annoyance. Sometimes they were simply irrelevant.Who wanted flowers to remind them of their soulmate's suffering, anyway?And yet... they were always right, one way or the other. Always.
Relationships: Abby Griffin & Eric Jackson, Abby Griffin/Jake Griffin, Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane, Atom/Octavia Blake, Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Bellamy Blake/Gina Martin, Bryan/Nathan Miller, Callie Cartwig/Marcus Kane, Charmaine Diyoza/Paxton McCreary, Costia/Lexa (The 100), Echo & Roan (The 100), Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, Finn Collins/Raven Reyes, Luna & Raven Reyes, Octavia Blake & Charmaine Diyoza, Octavia Blake/Ilian, Octavia Blake/Niylah, Raven Reyes/Miles Ezekiel Shaw
Series: When Flowers Bloom... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2063685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. ...Mushroom Clouds Bloom Bigger

**Author's Note:**

> Each oneshot will discuss a different character and their not-soul-bonded partners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Becca Franco

The soulmate marks were a relatively new phenomenon, and they had been baffling medical geniuses since the first recorded instance in 2021.

Dubbed "wound flowers", the marks became more and more commonplace; the world adapted to them, and the next generation were covered in the watercolour blossoms.

Debate raged among scientists about the cause and the meaning of the marks. Climate change activists claimed it was the earth asking humanity to remember and preserve its beauty, while various religious groups called for divorce to be banned - soulmates solved that issue, after all. Anti-military groups called for the end to war. Everyone had an opinion; everyone had a theory; and no one could talk about much else.

Journals and books were published on the marks; patterns were identified; success stories and tales of woe were reported, and celebrity couples speculated on. Crime investigation changed with the revelation that injuries inflicted on someone by their soulmate produced white lilies. Florists had to change their stocks; roses, now appearing over the heart of the surviving soulmate at the others' death, became the flower of choice not for Valentine's Day, but for funerals.

* * *

Becca Franco had always denounced the phenomenon of wound flowers, since no scientific evidence had ever been found to explain their presence or assess their accuracy. The very existence of soulmates, of predestination and happily ever after, were ideologies she simply couldn't accept in a world driven by science and technology.

However, that didn't stop her from studying her own wound flowers, watching with the mind of a romantic, not a scientist, as - day by day - the flowers bloomed, moved, faded, only to pop up again somewhere else.

Her soulmate seemed accident-prone. Becca's hands and fingers often flowered suddenly with wisteria and tiny cornflowers, spreading in the blue hues of bruises. Sometimes tiny sweetpeas, bright scarlet, would blossom in the centre - a cut or perhaps a blood blister which the bruising formed around. In her less analytical moments, Becca found herself studying the tattoo-like watercolours, wondering if her soulmate was an engineer, or a mechanic; someone who worked with their hands.

Most of the time, though, Becca ignored her wound flowers. If her soulmate was out there, their paths would eventually cross. In the meantime, she had to focus on her work - and ALIE was taking shape.

* * *

While the world focused on their flowers, Becca looked skywards, and aimed for the stars. She was ambitious, and her soulmate would have to wait.

She couldn't help it, however, when her traitorous mind whispered, _Will they get any wound flowers when we hit Zero- G?_

Becca didn't realise just how important her wound flowers were to her until ALIE released the nuclear weapons and she watched, frozen in horror, as explosion after explosion littered the surface of the earth below. It was... beautiful, in an odd way. Hypnotic.

She lifted a hand to press against the window. And then she realised her hands were clean - for the first time in many years.

It was thirty one years since her birth, and since the soulmate marks had first been recorded appearing. She gasped, and yanked the neck of her shirt.

An exquisite rose was positioned perfectly over her heart. It was colourless - like a flawless pencil sketch - but it was budding new. _They're alive,_ she thought, suddenly lightheaded with a rush of adrenaline and relief. It wasn't until that moment that she realised how important it was to her - how seeing that nose wilted and dead was her worst nightmare.

Her soulmate had survived the bombs, barely; they were close to death, that's what the rose was telling her. Now, she had to find a way to fix the mess she'd made - for what was left of humanity, and for her soulmate among them, before the rose over her heart wilted. No matter how long it took.


	2. ...We Build The Funeral Pyre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lexa, Costia

_Love is weakness._

That's easy for Titus to say, with his Fleimkepa tattoos unblemished by flowers, and his heart set only on serving the commander and the flame. Titus has no soulmate. 

Sometimes, Lexa wishes she also had no soulmate. The flowers are beautiful, but hard to hide - and the clans want a commander who is undistracted and uncompromising. 

_Love is weakness._

Of course, her soulmate would be a target to her enemies. That much is obvious; any warrior knows that a surefire way to best an opponent is to threaten those they hold dearest. 

Good, then, that Lexa's wound flowers - few and far between - do not match Costia. 

Costia has the rose. She traces Lexa's flowers, sometimes. "I don't care what they say," Lexa tells her fiercely, "I want you." 

And Costia smiles sadly, and kisses her sweetly. 

_Love is weakness._

Lexa is tracing a smattering of larkspurs and verbenas that have appeared on both of her wrists when Costia's head is delivered. 

She looses a strangled cry, and draws her sword, killing the messenger with a single stab wound.

Her hands go to her throat. Bare. Costia's neck is ragged; there should be rows of cardinals vivid on Lexa's throat, scarlet, like a choker. She should have known.

Trembling, she lifts her sword, presses it to the skin there - traitorously bare.

_Love is weakness._

The larkspurs on her wrists taunt her; she knows her chest will be bare, despite the evidence before her that her love is dead and gone. Her love, but not her soulmate. Still targeted by her enemies.

Titus slowly takes the sword from her trembling hands. She gulps and feels a bead of hot liquid travel down her throat.

Cardinals will be blooming on someone else's. 

_Love is weakness._

Lexa says it with him, let him take her into his arms, holding her.

She stops trembling. She feels numb. She feels nothing. 

_Love is weakness._


	3. ...We Learn To Heal Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jackson and Abby

Jackson knows she's married, and has a kid. He knows she's spending evenings with him to get him fully trained; he knows it's her job and he knows she enjoys teaching. He knows, when her hands meet his, that she's guiding him through a procedure; she's still teaching, adjusting, developing his technique. 

But that doesn't stop him noticing the way she tugs her sleeves uncomfortably, hiding her arms from view. It doesn't stop him from noticing that her tiny, steady hands are clean - as surely her husband's, working with moving parts all day, are not. It doesn't help him to tear his eyes away from those hands as they perform a full abdominal assessment, or carefully stitch a cut forehead. It doesn't stop him watching the way she interacts with her patients, or drinking in every detail of her face as she concentrates.

Jackson knows that Doctor Griffin is almost the same age as his parents, and is his boss and mentor to boot. He knows that he has more respect for her than anyone; he knows he'd do anything for her. 

He also knows that her husband is not her soulmate. 

Very, very occasionally, he lets himself wonder if he is.

He adores her, and they have plenty in common - so why not? If the fates dictate it... 

At last, just a few months before he is due to qualify as a doctor himself, it happens. 

She's been distracted of late. She is cleaning a scalpel - nothing on the Ark is single use. It's quiet; Jackson is wiping down the bed in the surgery room after a successful tonsillectomy.

"Ouch!" Doctor Griffin pulls her hand out of the acidic cleaning solution and sticks it hurriedly into plain water, swearing. Rosettes of blood develop, floating through the water. Jackson abandons his cleaning to reach for a bandage and cradles her hand, examines the wound between the third and fourth fingers of her right hand and down her palm. It's deep, but no tendons are involved; he dresses it gently, silently, and she smiles her thanks, lifts her uninjured hand to his cheek in a gesture that feels intimate, affectionate.

His palm stays stubbornly flower free.

She catches him looking, and chuckles kindly. "There's someone much better for you out there than me," she tells him, and he colours as red as the cardinals he'd hoped to see. "You'll find him, Jackson. We'll both find them. Don't rush it."

Jackson tries to smile, but his mouth doesn't seem to want to obey. She sits on the bed he'd cleared, pats the space beside her; he makes his way there slowly. She takes his bare hand in hers.

"You don't have to find your soulmate to find your family," she tells him gently. "Love comes in many forms. I've seen you grow so much in this job, and I'd be honoured to be your friend as well as your colleague. We don't need flowers to give us permission for that. You have me, and you will always have me - exactly as you need me. Nothing more, and nothing less."

And that might be the most valuable lesson that Doctor Eric Jackson was ever taught by the woman that mentored him in medicine but ultimately became his closest friend. Their relationship became stronger than it ever could have if Jackson had carried on wondering.

It takes him quite a few weeks to notice Abby's use of pronouns, and many, many more to accept that - once again - she knows best.


	4. ...That Coat Our Minds And Fill Our Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finn, Raven, Clarke

Neither of Finn's parents have soulmate marks. He never develops them either. 

He is bitterly jealous of some of his classmates as they compare the beautiful flowers - some of them even finding one another at such tender young ages. 

It takes until he meets the girl next door for him to stop caring. His parents remind him that they have no flowers, and they still found happiness. His jealousy abates; now he envies the beauty of the marks, but not their meaning. He is sure of his future with Raven, even though her wound flowers occasionally bloom, and they don't match his injuries. 

Finn is arrogant enough to expect Raven to feel the same; he sees that when his arrogance results in the death of two of the hundred in the drop ship.

Conversely, it's then Finn who stops feeling the same. Raven is gone, she's among the stars, and he's never been further from the Ark. The earth has changed his perspective completely. He feels able to move on because Raven is not his soul mate. Raven has a soulmate. She has her wound flowers to prove it. He pushes away the little voice that asks him, _what if her flowers have gone, and now she has a dead rose tattooed over her heart?_

Finn wonders if he will develop his own wound flowers now. His whole life trajectory has changed beyond belief; perhaps he has a soulmate now, here.

He thinks he'd very much like it to be Clarke. 

He makes that quite clear, he thinks - but her wound flowers blossom, and they aren't for him. She saves his life - as does Octavia. He wishes his stab wound was marked in crimson carnations on Clarke's skin. She doesn't seem to mind, though; she doesn't seem interested in her wound flowers at all. And, again, he thinks - _maybe they don't matter. Maybe we can do this despite the discoloured skin._

Again, he's wrong.

Clarke distances herself when Raven arrives. He's torn between two people he loves - and neither are his soulmate.

Finn has no soulmate.

He's surrounded by flowers, bleeding over their skins, growing around the camp. He lives in a state of permanent fear of the grounders and he craves the safety of the Ark, where everything was simpler. He prays for flowers to bloom on his skin, and he dreads the time they do.

He sits with Raven through her surgery, itching to check his back, scratch the skin away until the flowers are revealed. There's nothing. 

When Carke vanishes, Finn tears at his clothes, searching desperately for something - anything - 

Nothing. No flowers. No rose. Nothing. Nothing to tell him Where she is, what is happening to her. He can't see past the grounder village - the coats, their tattoos, the flowers.

No Clarke.

Had one of them taken her?

Was one of them carrying her flowers? 

Finn remembers very little else, until Clarke - still bearing her flowered arms - appears in the village.

"I found you."

And still, the flowers are not his.

* * *

When Finn dies, he is relieved.

Earth is confusing; it's too bright, too colourful, too loud, too big and open. Too flowery.

"Thanks, princess," he whispers.

There will be no white lily to mark her, his soulmate, wounding him. There will be no rose tattooed over her heart, nor Raven's. Finn has no soulmate - and this is why. 

He was never going to make it on the ground.


	5. ...Eden Grows Back Stronger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diyoza, McCreary, Octavia

Charmaine Diyoza has no wound flowers. 

Charmaine Diyoza has no soulmate. 

This fact is one that stays with her throughout every part of her life. She's by no means unusual - a lot of her marine buddies have no soulmates either. They serve; they protect each other as fiercely as if they are all soulmates. 

When she turns on the government she used to serve, some of them tum with her. She is satisfied - they are her people. 

When she is cornered, she runs her knife across her throat without a second thought. The imagined picture of blood red carnations spreading across someone else's throat like a stain is the last thing she sees. She has a dim realisation that perhaps, her lack of flowers - and the fact that her cut throat won't be seen on anyone else's skin, and her death will leave no eternal rose - matters more to her than she's ever admitted to herself. 

When she's recovered, though, she dismisses the thought. She makes herself the leader of a team once again, and unites a group under a cause. Sex is about power, manipulation, and progress - not love. She uses it to her advantage; Paxton McCreary comes under "keep your enemies closer".

Falling pregnant is not part of the plan.

Diyoza is self reliant and self made, she has no soulmate. She doesn't need or want anyone else. But her heart swells with love for her unborn child. She prays that her little girl will know a better world; that she will have tiny flowers on her knees and palms, simple injuries as her soulmate learns to walk at the same time she does.

Paxton McCreary could never have been her soulmate; he cared about no one but himself. But he gave Diyoza the best gift; a way back from what she had become. A chance at redemption, a chance to not be lonely. A soulmate, bonded by parentage, not romance.

And Octavia.

She bears the rose; Diyoza knows she can no more be Octavia's soulmate than Paxton could hers. But she can't ask for a better second parent for Hope. She and Octavia have past mistakes in common; they have matching scars. Diyoza thinks, in a different world, their twin wounds could have drawn forth twin blooms.

As it is, she treasures their years on Skyring together, bringing up Hope. It's enough, she decides. It's so much more than she ever thought she could have. 

This time, when she reaches unflinchingly for death, it is without regrets.


	6. ...We Try In Vain To Resurrect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raven, Finn, Shaw

Raven was born breech, bottom first, with a light dusting of yellow yarrow flowers covering her tanned middle like jaundice. 

"Her soulmate has a chest infection," the midwife announced. 

Of course, Raven remembered nothing of that; but she treasured the story, for her wound flowers were few and far between. Occasional small, faint patches of hydrangeas would pop up on her thighs - as if someone had walked into a table - or her shoulders, perhaps from running and catching a door frame. The Ark was full of metal structures that stuck out from the walls. Even more infrequently, she would develop delicate swathes of minute scarlet sweetpeas on her hands and fingers, and spend hours studying their placement, wondering how on earth her soulmate had managed them. 

She often wondered, growing up, whether her soulmate worried about the numbers of flowers that must be growing on their skin. She sometimes murmured an apology to them, when the marks were particularly difficult to hide. Her injuries were fewer after her mother's death; they were workshop and accidental injuries rather than injuries sustained while trying to procure, hide, or withhold moonshine, or protect her mother from Nygel and people like her. She wondered if her soulmate had noticed the difference. 

It was Finn who convinced her that it didn't matter. He had never believed in the soulmate marks. 

"Who wants tattooed flowers to tell them that their ideal partner has another paper cut?" He asked, and shook his head. "It's a load of rubbish."

And he had no wound flowers.

Raven began to wonder if it was belief that made her flowers appear, and disbelief that stopped Finn's; and as she fell in love with him, slowly and then all at once, her wound flowers became fewer and fewer. _Coincidence_ , she wondered, _or disbelief?_

Her opinion changed daily, but her belief in her love for Finn did not. She was certain that they would be together forever, flowers or not.

Landing on earth changed everything - or perhaps, if the wound flowers had any truth to them, it changed nothing.

Raven's first glimpse of earth, the smell of the rain, and the waxy feel of the red flowers outside her pod - it all renewed her fascination. She had largely ignored her wound flowers since falling for Finn, but over the last few weeks she had noticed clusters of tiny sweet peas around her fingernails - as if her soulmate had been worrying the skin there. The beauty of real foliage and the smells of earth kept her grounded as she discovered that Finn had moved on. It reminded her that her soulmate was out there - and largely uninjured, it seemed.

Finn was never meant for her; that didn't mean that she could stop loving him, but it did bring her comfort when he moved on without her. 

* * *

Raven understood Luna on a level she'd never experienced. 

She could see Luna's suffering, and understand how much hate she'd bottled up inside her. She felt how much Luna wanted out of the violent world of the Grounders, and how desperate she was to escape the death and suffering surrounding them all. 

She hated herself for convincing Luna to stay on the island and have her bone marrow extracted - even though she knew it was necessary. _Necessary for the survival of humanity,_ she thought to herself in her darker moments, _but that might not be the best thing for the planet._

When she snapped - a combination, perhaps, of her brain betraying her, and the white lilies painting her chest, and the stress of the second end of the world - and Luna held her... Raven felt peace. The words Luna murmured - the ocean, the water, was as close to zero-G as the earth could offer. Things were simpler there. 

Raven wanted the clarity Luna had found. She wanted to be able to hate humanity like Luna did; she wanted to denounce the species she belonged to and float away on the ocean's tides, picturing a backdrop of inky darkness and pinpoint stars. She wanted to share Luna's world.

She supposed that would be easier to do with a dead rose tattooed in monochrome over her heart, identical to Luna's. With a still-moving canvas of colourful blooms tracking across her skin, though... that was a different story.

* * *

After a tumultuous two years on earth, and six more back on the Ark, Raven wasn't sure any more how much she wanted her wound flowers.

Shaw was a breath of fresh air. He was damaged, but underneath it all he was good - and that's what Raven hoped she herself was too. He understood her. He understood her pain, her cryptic confessions and her half stories. She'd never wanted her wound flowers to change so much in her life, but she wanted him to be her soulmate. She hadn't cared whether Finn was her soulmate or not; she'd loved him anyway. But Shaw... her damaged soul ached for him to be her solace and safety. 

He wasn't. His death hurt; she savagely hoped her soulmate had the flowers to prove it as she cried, and pounded the ground of the new planet they would no doubt grind to dust and ash.

"I wanted him, not you!"


	7. ...That We Use To Poultice Our Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Echo, Roan, Bellamy

King Roan is an outcast.  Echo allies herself to him, for she too is on the fringes of society. 

She misses human contact. She misses having a genuine connection with someone.  Echo wasn't born a ruthless killer. She is good at it, but the emotional toll is heavier than she likes to admit. 

Perhaps, in allying with Roan, she is hoping for more than a place to belong. Perhaps she is hoping that the burden of the dead rose she carries on her chest will lighten with his help - for he carries a twin mark. 

He is dedicated to his soulmate, though, whoever they were. Echo supposes it is for the best. She serves, and there is no personal connection to get in the way.  There is no guilt or mourning at his death. 

* * *

Bellamy has been her enemy, or at least her rival, for so long that when Echo finally begins to recognise what they could become, it's too late to stop it. 

She supposes six years among the stars would do odd things to any grounder; there's nothing to fight, nothing to climb, nothing to grow.  All they can do is talk, and heal, and bond - and really, isn't this what she's been craving since Roan's mother destroyed her?  Wasn't chasing Roan only making her rose harder to bear?

Bellamy showed her kindness in the cages of the mountain men, and Bellamy had no wound flowers.  In the absence of their true soulmates, there is no more comfortable arrangement than what they have.

Echo's rose is as vivid as ever, but - finally - she feels like she may be healing.

Bellamy may not be her soulmate, but he's everything she needs - and if going into space for a little perspective is what it took to get there, Echo is glad she made it.  Even if she misses the sweet green earth.


	8. ...And We Tell Ourselves That It's Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abby, Jake, Marcus

Abigail Clarke grew up without wound flowers. 

She married the love of her life and became Abigail Griffin, then Doctor Abigail Griffin. 

And then, at twenty-two - newly qualified, and refusing to take time off despite a hacking cough - flowers bloom across her skin. She waits late at work, hoping the pale blue verbenas might somehow fade from her hips before she returns to hers and Jake's quarters. She can't understand how she's gone twenty-two years of her life without a single flower - and now there are thousands of delicate, tiny blooms covering her middle and her thighs. 

_What happened to my soulmate today - and who are they?_

She returns meekly to her husband, and he knows immediately that something is wrong; he's quickly on his feet, holding his hands out to her. "What happened?" He asks. Abby bites her lip, and her eyes fill with tears, because _he_ is her soulmate - he _must_ be. 

She lifts her shirt and her first tear falls. Jake stares, dumbstruck, at the flowers.

That is the night Clarke is conceived. 

From then on, Abby is always covered in flowers, fresh ones blooming constantly, layering over each other - hydrangeas on forget-me-nots on cornflowers, larkspurs, wisteria. Clarke takes after her mother - if it works like that - from the moment she's born. Blue and scarlet flowers constantly burst to life on her skin. Jake - skin bare, as ever - takes it all in his stride. He jokes that he is his girls' protector, because evidently their soul mates are violent individuals.

When the joking stops and the problems start, Abby understands. She loves Jake. She always has, she always will. But when it comes down to it, reporting Jake isn't the best choice - it's the only choice. She wonders if she'd have been able to do that to her soulmate - whoever they may be.

* * *

Everything changes on the ground. It's more beautiful than Abby ever could have imagined - and more deadly. Enemies become friends, and more dangerous enemies take their place.

Like Jake's, Marcus's skin is clean. She's sure he recognises who her soulmate is from when and where the colours flower across her skin, covering freckles. He never mentions them. And everything with Marcus is - it's comfortable. Easy. He makes allowances for her; he comforts her, he protects her; he betters her. He becomes a safety blanket, and she loves him - yes, she loves him, just as she loved Jake. 

But the canvas of her skin, the delicately painted blossoms, remind her that he will never be enough.

It only makes her cling on harder.


	9. ...That Fertilises The Ground For The Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Octavia, Atom, Ilian, Diyoza

After the confines of her room on the Ark, the journey to the dance, and to the sky box, were overwhelming. Even imprisoned, Octavia felt free. 

It was nothing compared to the ground. 

Octavia was realising how much she'd missed, how sheltered her life had truly been. What she'd been asking to experience, whenever she asked to step outside her world's bounds. She'd certainly stepped outside them now - further than she had ever dreamed possible. 

In the heady rush of freedom that being on the ground game, Atom was an experiment - Octavia taking the opportunity to catch up on life experiences she had missed. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Ilian, though; he could have been more, but for the timing. He had scars like hers - blood on his hands. He could have helped her heal, maybe - if her wounds weren't so deep. If her flowers hadn't stopped growing. If the rose that had bloomed over her heart wasn't permanently dead and wilted. 

No, Ilian could never have lived with her scars; he would have tried to heal the unhealable. It never would have worked. Octavia knew it; and during the conclave, she recognised that Ilian did too. 

Blodreina had no capacity for romance. Blodreina was the result of the wounds and the scars Octavia carried. The spaces on her skin where flowers used to blossom - spaces that Blodreina carved into unfeelingly to paint her face for war.

Diyoza saw those scars and she sought not to heal them, but to move forward. She had scars of her own; one stretched ropily over her throat. Her soulmate, too, was out of reach, and her scars were from a different place. A different time, even. Neither of them were ready for a romance, that much was clear. But bringing Hope up together - having so many years of peace, making amends together - it was enough. Octavia thought that if she couldn't have her soulmate, then perhaps having someone who understood her, and a little one to give her purpose and purity, was the next best thing. Those years were her happiest - and Diyoza gave them to her.

That was the closest thing to a soulmate she could think of.


	10. ...And Blow Away On The Breeze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke, Niylah, Bellamy

Clarke Griffin's pale skin was never free of blue hues and scarlet blooms. Sometimes, yellow dahlias would edge the various reds; her mother would fuss over the infection, wishing she knew who to treat. Even orange butterfly weed sometimes blossomed amongst the wisteria - a sprained ankle, a broken humerous. The pattern of injuries, once Clarke was old enough to see through the initial beauty of the flowers, was alarming. 

Then there were the deliberate marks. 

One day, a swathe of tiny red cardinals bloomed in an obvious pattern down Clarke's spine. A few months earlier, odd swirling shapes had appeared on Clarke's upper arm; not long afterwards, a sideways "8" was barely visible on the back of her neck, under all her blonde hair. 

Clarke could remember the day she suddenly realised that her soulmate couldn't be on the Ark. She wasn't sure how she'd never realised it before- perhaps because, to their knowledge, all of humanity was on the Ark. But no one walked the metalled floors bearing wounds as extensive as her flowers. No one had presented to medical with the injuries she bore evidence of.

A tiny row of scarlet carnations developed across her throat the day the broadcast should have been shared. Clarke's only comfort - locked in the sky box and facing floating, mourning her father alone - was that if the Ark were to die, humanity would live on. Somewhere, somehow; it had to. Her soulmate existed somewhere. Even if it seemed a more violent existence that she'd have liked.

* * *

Niylah was the first welcome distraction Clarke allowed herself after she found out who her soulmate was. Something about Niylah intrigued Clarke. She lived simply, and there was an innocence to her that was endearing - and yet, she proved again and again that she needed no protection. In her darker moments, Clarke wished her soulmate could be someone simpler. Someone like Niylah. Niylah meant a lot to Clarke. She wished she could mean more.

* * *

The only other person Clarke wished, sometimes, to have as a soulmate was Bellamy. 

The head and the heart.

His skin was unblemished by the splashes of vivid wound flowers. But they understood one another on a whole different level; they sacrificed so much for one another. Those long years alone, and then with Madi, were only bearable when she imagined Bell hearing her radio calls. They were only so difficult to bear because she invited him so much.

They never broached the topic of a romance between them. Clarke wondered, sometimes, if he wanted to; wondered if she could. Her hand often strayed to the live rose tattooed over her heart when these thoughts reappeared. It was a relief, in a way, when Bellamy and Echo came down from the Ark head over heels for one another. Echo's dead rose was more - more complete, somehow. It offered more closure. It let Clarke enjoy her relationship with Bellamy without wondering if he could be everything to her.


	11. ...We Mourn Their Rightful Passing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miller and Bryan

When Miller was put in the sky box, he was optimistic that he wouldn't be floated. His was a minor crime, and Bryan was waiting for him. 

Miller was endlessly optimistic that Bryan was his soulmate. The wound flowers they both carried were tiny. The injuries they both carried were tinier. There wasn't enough evidence to prove they were soulmates - but there wasn't enough to prove they weren't, either. 

Miller didn't believe that they were really going to earth - that he wouldn't see Bryan again - until the drop ship was ejected from the Ark. The moment of freefall. And then he knew that he was no longer an optimist - and he was going to die.

When he didn't die, and his wound flowers didn't fade, and no roses bloomed on his chest - his optimism didn't return. The Ark came to earth, but Bryan wasn't with it. Miller didn't know, any more, who his soulmate was - but he was damn well going to fight for the chance to find out. 

* * *

When farm station was found, and Bryan was there - Miller wasn't sure how to feel. 

A familiar rush of optimism. _He's here. We're back together on earth. This can work._

But earth was violent, and painful. Earth was not the Ark. Bryan had changed; he was loyal to a man that threatened everything. Miller had changed; he was a fighter now. He realised it as he was promising Bryan an end to the fighting; a house on a lake, with corn, and chickens. Growing old together. He realised it when it was too late to take the words back.

The flowers knew, though; now that they were often injured, one way or another, there was evidence. And their flowers didn't match.

Miller was okay with that.

He forgave Bryan for bugging him - because he would have done the same. But when Bryan admitted he betrayed Pike, not because he changed his opinion, but to protect Miller - that, he couldn't forgive. Miller had become a fighter. He needed something to be loyal to - he needed a cause to fight for, at all costs, against all odds. It was the only way he could make sense of this world.

And Bryan wouldn't ever be that. He would always come second. Miller knew that wasn't fair - because Bryan would always put him first, even though the verbenas covering his arms matched someone else's bruises. Miller couldn't give him the farm; he couldn't give him happily ever after, or utter dedication. 

Bryan knew, Miller thought. From the moment he forgave him for placing the bug, Bryan knew - because Miller from the Ark, Miller the thief, would never have forgiven that.

The hydro-generator, though - that was a step too far for Bryan. Their relationship was rocky already, but life and death decisions - Bryan would always choose with his heart. It was his nature. It's why he'd always choose Miller.

But Miller had to think smart. He had to use his head.

He knew their differences were irreconcilable. It didn't stop him mourning the end of a long relationship - but he knew it was the right decision.

Miller expected that his soulmate was similarly dedicated to something other than love _._


	12. ...That We Use To Sculpt A Poor Substitute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marcus, Callie, Abby

Marcus's wound flowers don't make a great deal of sense, he doesn't think.

He's born with a shock of scarlet sweetpeas running across his throat; they take months to fade into pink outlines, and years after that to disappear. He can remember them - he must have been four or five when they finally cleared.

He'd not had any since; and no rose, either. Whoever his soulmate was, and no matter how catastrophic that injury, they survived.

Callie carries no flowers, and they make it work, but he doesn't tell her about his.

When she is floated, he mourns - but, like Dr. Griffin just three days before when she reported her Jake and lost him to the stars, he doesn't fight it. Callie broke the law; he is on the Council and he is responsible for upholding the law. Things happened as they should have.

The earth, though - that changes things. It changes Marcus.

He falls further and loves harder; Abby is everything he wishes his soulmate could be. He realises that only when he guiltily checks his back for a smattering of white lilies after shock lashing her, watching her reduced from dignified to sobbing.

There's no point in checking. He's seen her flowers.

He is not the one for her.

And yet...

When ALIE tries to hang her, the bruising stands out vividly on her throat. When he sees her, his hands shoot to his own, clamping to his neck.

_ It's not,  _ he tells himself.  _ My flowers were red, a cut, an incision. Her soulmate's will be blue. And wound flowers don't time travel. _

But that moment of hope tells him to keep trying, and he does; he loves her and protects her as much as he can, for as long as he can.

It's not enough; he can't protect her from herself, and in the end, that ruins them both.


	13. ...But Beauty All The Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy, Gina, Clarke, Echo

From the moment Octavia was born, Bellamy made it his life's mission to keep her safe.

He didn't have any wound flowers before she came along, and he didn't develop any afterwards.

Octavia, though - she was always covered in them. He shuddered to think who her soulmate was, and what their life was like. No one on the Ark was that accident-prone -  _ surely _ .

And the patterns the flowers sometimes appeared in, like the tattoos of old - they didn't exist any more; not on the Ark. So why did they appear on his sister’s skin?

Bellamy was fascinated by them, but protective.

He told Octavia that her soulmate's violence had better stay well away from their relationship, and she smiled at him. "I'm not afraid," she replied each time.

But Bellamy was. He was afraid of losing his little sister - and he was afraid of his own clean skin.

When the wounds Bellamy inflicted with his hands were painted vividly across his sister's skin in larkspurs, forget-me-nots and cornflowers, something between them changed. It was irrevocable, and he couldn't fix it.

* * *

Bellamy loved spending time with Gina. He loved her company and the distraction from the chaos of earth. She had no flowers either, and she didn't care.

After Gina was killed, Bellamy was lost. They might not have been soulmates, but she meant a lot to him; she wasn't the first girl he'd been with, but she was the first girl he'd stayed with. She was the best part of his day, every day.

His thoughts eventually turned to Clarke. Their relationship was nowhere near as relaxed as his and Gina's, but she was the most important person in his life besides Octavia. They'd been through so much together; they'd been through things that no-one else could understand.

But that wouldn’t have been enough - or perhaps it would have been too much. Bellamy had a lot of time on the Ark with spacekru to think it through after Praimfaya - and Clarke’s death brought a clarity he felt he needed.

Clarke would always mean an incredible amount to him - but they both had too many ghosts at their heels. Always too many more big decisions to make, too much responsibility still to bear.

Bellamy came to the conclusion that he had no soulmate because his responsibility was to mind his sister - and he couldn't do that on the Go-Sci ring.

* * *

Echo's wilted rose was delicately beautiful. Getting to know the person within after so long - after being adversaries for longer than allies - was fascinating.

She was so much more than he'd ever had guessed.

She had ghosts and traumas of her own, but they could talk and help heal one another; they weren't living those events together.

Clarke would always be important to him because of what they'd been through - just as Octavia would always be his sister no matter what she'd done and who she'd become.

He had no soulmate, but he had Echo. And he was satisfied with his lot; even - or perhaps  _ especially  _ \- when he found out that Clarke had survived.


End file.
